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Man Survived 22,000-Foot Fall Out of Bomber
Albuquerque Journal | 2/3/04 | Paul Logan

Posted on 02/03/2004 8:54:26 PM PST by woofie

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To: jordan8
She actually was in the tail section, which was separated from the plane, and it kinda slid on the slope of a mountain, but all in all still a bit of a miracle.
81 posted on 02/04/2004 4:27:24 PM PST by Michael121 (An old soldier knows truth. Only a Dead Soldier knows peace.)
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To: woofie
It is surprising how many people have survived falls from planes.

I remember a story (I think it was in Reader's Digers) quite a few years ago about a paratrooper whose chutes failed to open. He landed in a soft field which was muddy and only suffered a broken leg. This was at Eglin Field Florida, of course on the reservation.

Another thing I recall is a German pilot who saw Russian troops jumping out of a plane into the snow. The plane was only a few feet above the ground.

82 posted on 02/04/2004 4:41:28 PM PST by yarddog
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To: woofie
120 mps (approx) terminal velocity for a human being.
83 posted on 02/04/2004 4:56:24 PM PST by jpsb (Nominated 1994 "Worst writer on the net")
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To: jpsb
Ops, mps = mph , 120 mps and he'd be a greece spot on impact.
84 posted on 02/04/2004 5:00:52 PM PST by jpsb (Nominated 1994 "Worst writer on the net")
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To: Travis McGee
I think that landing on a cactus, no matter from what height, is simply adding insult to injury.
85 posted on 02/04/2004 5:04:38 PM PST by Dog Gone
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To: Dog Gone
You can say that again!
86 posted on 02/04/2004 5:33:54 PM PST by Travis McGee (www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
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To: justshutupandtakeit
Far as I know the B-17s were the only planes with ball turrets...Might have been minor mods over the duration of the war.....

......Westy......

87 posted on 02/04/2004 5:40:50 PM PST by westmex
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To: Johnny Gage
HOLY COW is right!!! My hair's standing up!!! brrrrr!

That's a looooooong way to fall! It obviously just wasn't his time to go.
88 posted on 02/05/2004 1:48:49 AM PST by radu (May God watch over our troops and keep them safe)
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To: radu
This doesn't surprise me. Look how far Howard Dean fell in two short weeks.

Wait, I forgot. He didn't survive...

Never mind!
89 posted on 02/05/2004 2:03:30 AM PST by EternalVigilance
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To: EternalVigilance
ROTFLOL!!!
Good one, EV!!

(now I gotta clean off this wet monitor. just soaked it.)
90 posted on 02/05/2004 2:39:56 AM PST by radu (May God watch over our troops and keep them safe)
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To: radu
Well, hey, how often does a whole thread set up a joke like that anyway?!

;-)

(sorry about the monitor...) LOL...
91 posted on 02/05/2004 2:56:11 AM PST by EternalVigilance
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To: EternalVigilance
Well, hey, how often does a whole thread set up a joke like that anyway?!

Not often. Good going, seeing the opportunity and going for it! *g*

Looks like the monitor will survive....once again. I knooooow better than to read and sip at the same time.
Almost bedtime and my brain isn't fully in gear right now. :-)

92 posted on 02/05/2004 3:02:46 AM PST by radu (May God watch over our troops and keep them safe)
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To: woofie
IIRC, in the 60s timeframe an airliner suffered an inflight breakup over the Amazon. One young woman, still strapped in her seat, survived the plunge through the jungle canopy. With crippling injuries she was still able to trek through the rain forest to find rescue. Absolutely amazing.
93 posted on 02/21/2004 7:49:04 PM PST by XHogPilot
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To: XHogPilot

Free Fall
The Free Fall Research Page

Unplanned Freefall? Some Survival Tips By David Carkeet
Admit it: You want to be the sole survivor of an airline disaster. You aren't looking for a disaster to happen, but if it does, you see yourself coming through it. I'm here to tell you that you're not out of touch with reality—you can do it. Sure, you'll take a few hits, and I'm not saying there won't be some sweaty flashbacks later on, but you'll make it. You'll sit up in your hospital bed and meet the press. Refreshingly, you will keep God out of your public comments, knowing that it's unfair to sing His praises when all of your dead fellow-passengers have no platform from which to offer an alternative view.
Let's say your jet blows apart at 35,000 feet. You exit the aircraft, and you begin to descend independently. Now what?
First of all, you're starting off a full mile higher than Everest, so after a few gulps of disappointing air you're going to black out. This is not a bad thing. If you have ever tried to keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, you know what I mean. This brief respite from the ambient fear and chaos will come to an end when you wake up at about 15,000 feet. Here begins the final phase of your descent, which will last about a minute. It is a time of planning and preparation. Look around you. What equipment is available? None? Are you sure? Look carefully. Perhaps a shipment of folded parachutes was in the cargo hold, and the blast opened the box and scattered them. One of these just might be within reach. Grab it, put it on, and hit the silk. You're sitting pretty.
Other items can be helpful as well. Let nature be your guide. See how yon maple seed gently wafts to earth on gossamer wings. Look around for a proportionate personal vehicle—some large, flat, aerodynamically suitable piece of wreckage. Mount it and ride, cowboy! Remember: molecules are your friends. You want a bunch of molecules of solid matter hitting a bunch of atmospheric molecules in order to reduce your rate of acceleration.
As you fall, you're going to realize that your previous visualization of this experience has been off the mark. You have seen yourself as a loose, free body, and you've imagined yourself in the belly-down, limbs-out position (good: you remembered the molecules). But, pray tell, who unstrapped your seat belt? You could very well be riding your seat (or it could be riding you; if so, straighten up and fly right!); you might still be connected to an entire row of seats or to a row and some of the attached cabin structure.
If thus connected, you have some questions to address. Is your new conveyance air-worthy? If your entire row is intact and the seats are occupied, is the passenger next to you now going to feel free to break the code of silence your body language enjoined upon him at takeoff? If you choose to go it alone, simply unclasp your seat belt and drift free. Resist the common impulse to use the wreckage fragment as a "jumping-off point" to reduce your plunge-rate, not because you will thereby worsen the chances of those you leave behind (who are they kidding? they're goners!), but just because the effect of your puny jump is so small compared with the alarming Newtonian forces at work.
Just how fast are you going? Imagine standing atop a train going 120 mph, and the train goes through a tunnel but you do not. You hit the wall above the opening at 120 mph. That's how fast you will be going at the end of your fall. Yes, it's discouraging, but proper planning requires that you know the facts. You're used to seeing things fall more slowly. You're used to a jump from a swing or a jungle gym, or a fall from a three-story building on TV action news. Those folks are not going 120 mph. They will not bounce. You will bounce. Your body will be found some distance away from the dent you make in the soil (or crack in the concrete). Make no mistake: you will be motoring.
At this point you will think: trees. It's a reasonable thought. The concept of "breaking the fall" is powerful, as is the hopeful message implicit in the nursery song "Rock-a-bye, Baby," which one must assume from the affect of the average singer tells the story not of a baby's death but of its survival. You will want a tall tree with an excurrent growth pattern—a single, undivided trunk with lateral branches, delicate on top and thicker as you cascade downward. A conifer is best. The redwood is attractive for the way it rises to shorten your fall, but a word of caution here: the redwood's lowest branches grow dangerously high from the ground; having gone 35,000 feet, you don't want the last 50 feet to ruin everything. The perfectly tiered Norfolk Island pine is a natural safety net, so if you're near New Zealand, you're in luck, pilgrim. When crunch time comes, elongate your body and hit the tree limbs at a perfectly flat angle as close to the trunk as possible. Think!
Snow is good—soft, deep, drifted snow. Snow is lovely. Remember that you are the pilot and your body is the aircraft. By tilting forward and putting your hands at your side, you can modify your pitch and make progress not just vertically but horizontally as well. As you go down 15,000 feet, you can also go sideways two-thirds of that distance—that's two miles! Choose your landing zone. You be the boss.
If your search discloses no trees or snow, the parachutist's "five-point landing" is useful to remember even in the absence of a parachute. Meet the ground with your feet together, and fall sideways in such a way that five parts of your body successively absorb the shock, equally and in this order: feet, calf, thigh, buttock, and shoulder. 120 divided by 5 = 24. Not bad! 24 mph is only a bit faster than the speed at which experienced parachutists land. There will be some bruising and breakage but no loss of consciousness to delay your press conference. Just be sure to apportion the 120-mph blow in equal fifths. Concentrate!
Much will depend on your attitude. Don't let negative thinking ruin your descent. If you find yourself dwelling morbidly on your discouraging starting point of seven miles up, think of this: Thirty feet is the cutoff for fatality in a fall. That is, most who fall from thirty feet or higher die. Thirty feet! It's nothing! Pity the poor sod who falls from such a "height." What kind of planning time does he have?
Think of the pluses in your situation. For example, although you fall faster and faster for the first fifteen seconds or so, you soon reach "terminal velocity"—the point at which atmospheric drag resists gravity's acceleration in a perfect standoff. Not only do you stop speeding up, but because the air is thickening as you fall, you actually begin to slow down. With every foot that you drop, you are going slower and slower.
There's more. When parachutists focus on a landing zone, sometimes they become so fascinated with it that they forget to pull the ripcord. Since you probably have no ripcord, "target fixation" poses no danger. Count your blessings.
Think of others who have gone before you. Think of Vesna Vulovic, a flight attendant who in 1972 fell 33,000 feet in the tail of an exploded DC-9 jetliner; she landed in snow and lived. Vesna knew about molecules.
Think of Joe Hermann of the Royal Australian Air Force, blown out of his bomber in 1944 without a parachute. He found himself falling through the night sky amid airplane debris and wildly grabbed a piece of it. It turned out to be not debris at all, but rather a fellow flyer in the process of pulling his ripcord. Joe hung on and, as a courtesy, hit the ground first, breaking the fall of his savior and a mere two ribs of his own. Joe was not a quitter. Don't you be.
Think of Nick Alkemade, an RAF tailgunner who jumped from his flaming turret without a parachute and fell 18,000 feet. When he came to and saw stars overhead, he lit a cigarette. He would later describe the fall as "a pleasant experience." Nick's trick: fir trees, underbrush, and snow.
But in one important regard, Nick is a disappointment. He gave up. As he plummeted to Germany, he concluded he was going to die and felt "a strange peace." This is exactly the wrong kind of thinking. It will get you nowhere but dead fast. You cannot give up and plan aggressively at the same time.
To conclude, here are some words that might help you avoid such a collapse of resolve on your way down.
"Keep a-goin'." (Frank L. Stanton)
"Failure is not an option." (Ed Harris, as the guy in Apollo 13 who says, "Failure is not an option")
"'Hope' is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops-at all." (Emily Dickinson)

94 posted on 02/21/2004 8:13:50 PM PST by tet68
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To: tet68
Unplanned Freefall? Some survival tips. Hey tet68, where did you ever find a website like that? That post almost killed me with laughter. Anyhow, went to The Free Fall Research Page and, gee, there she was...

Juliane Koepcke
On Christmas Eve of 1971, a commercial airliner over Peru was struck by lightning and broke up during a storm. A teenage girl, Juliane Koepcke, fell two miles, still strapped in her seat. She survived, but her ordeal had just begun. Despite a broken collarbone and other injuries, she walked for 11 days through the Amazon rain forest and finally found help. Her story has been the subject of two films, the most recent being a Werner Herzog documentary called Wings of Hope.

95 posted on 02/21/2004 8:40:14 PM PST by XHogPilot
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To: RightOnline
I DON'T THINK SO!!
96 posted on 02/21/2004 8:43:46 PM PST by airborne (5)
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To: tet68
Think of Joe Hermann of the Royal Australian Air Force, blown out of his bomber in 1944 without a parachute. He found himself falling through the night sky amid airplane debris and wildly grabbed a piece of it. It turned out to be not debris at all, but rather a fellow flier in the process of pulling his ripcord.

Some of my cousins are old enough to be my parents. Cousin Bill was a paratrooper in the Pacific during WWII. He was the "catcher" in a situation similar to the above (the other soldier's chute didn't open). The guy he caught never failed to send him a Christmas card every year thereafter.

97 posted on 02/21/2004 8:48:41 PM PST by DeFault User
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To: krb
love dat nose-art!
especially since a lot of it drives the Political-Correctness-police crazy!
98 posted on 02/21/2004 8:57:26 PM PST by VOA
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To: woofie
Bump out of pure amazement. Excuse me, am I late for my train?
99 posted on 02/24/2004 3:54:04 PM PST by FormerACLUmember (Man rises to greatness if greatness is expected of him)
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To: okie01

Has anyone else heard this World War II Attu story? If you have any additional details I would be very interested in hearing them. I have collected a lot of similar stories (and the corresponding supporting evidence), but this one is turning out to be a tough one to substantiate. I have contacted several experts on the Aleutian campaign and no one has heard of it.

If you want to see other similar stories, please check out the Free Fall Research page at http://www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/ffresearch.html


100 posted on 08/02/2006 5:26:04 PM PDT by JimHamilton
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